When Outdoor Beer Pong Is Illegal…

…only indoor beer pong will be legal.

Reader Greg Fagan sends along news that all that talk about getting the kids out of the house and into the fresh air outdoors is for naught. Belmar, New Jersey, one of the quintessential beach towns in the greatest state in the Union, has panned outdoor beer pong. Reports the AP (via the Philly Inq):

The ordinance…prohibits such games on porches, decks, lawns, front and side yards, or anywhere that the public and neighbors can see. Fines begin at $100 for a first offense.

The so-called "beer pong" regulation takes its name from a game in which players try throwing or bouncing Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer to trigger rounds of drinking. Quarters is a similar game using coins….

Belmar's population, which is 6,000 year-round, can surge to 70,000 on a hot summer weekend, Plummer said.

Some summer renters, such as Michael Todd, said the borough was trying to drive out young people, who give the area an economic boost. Todd, 27, filed a complaint against a police officer who issued him a summons for playing Wiffle ball, the Asbury Park Press reported yesterday.

"I didn't know Belmar all of [a] sudden turned into a big dictatorship borough," Todd said.

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I read an article about this which said that the law specifically targets outdoor games featuring alcohol.

I'm not a beach person, but I have an intense craving to rent a cottage in this town, invite a bunch of friends over, play beer pong in the front yard, and then when the cops show up demonstrate that it's not beer, but non-alcoholic Coca-Cola.

And then let out a long, rude, Coke-scented belch.

[Anon]

Is there a list of how many times this particular title has been used on H&R? Sort of a Cliff notes guide to modern legislation.

Anon

[jim bob]

Belmar has been trying to push out the young for years. I still don't think they're over that MTV party from the mid-90s (see the table on page 7 of http://www.crowdsafe.com/englishspeech.PDF). They should have known that anyone exposed to Kris Kross music will start a riot.

[Charles]

This has to be a joke or else it is the height in Government regulation run amuck.

I see this as a big contradiction. Cities (downtowns) want activity and people create activity. Young adults create excitement. Yet, governments will do everything they can think of to remove the source of any enjoyable activity unless it is a passive sitting watching a baseball game in a publically financed park drinking overpriced beverages.

It is time that this community take control of its politicians and shake some sense into them.

[jim bob]

It is time that this community take control of its politicians and shake some sense into them.

If this is the Belmar that I remember from my NJ days, then they have (in their eyes). They like the tourist dollars but don't want any trouble.

[David]

Then people will continue to go to places like Las Vegas to have fun and these towns will lament and wonder why tourists aren't coming anymore.

[independent worm]

Don't live in a beach town if you don't like young drunk people running around. Also, if you hate the sight of hot chicks in bikinis then you definitely don't want to live in a beach town. If the smell of Budweiser and pot smoke carried aloft on a cool summer breeze offends you, then by all means, purchase your property well inland. And that goes double if you live in a beach/college town (which is the greatest kind of town there is).

As we speak i am getting ready to leave DC for good and move to a wonderful little beach/college town. IMO a far more fun and interesting type of place to raise kids than a place where white male clones drone on and on about "policy" while siphoning our tax dollars to pay for covert gay escorts and ugly apartments in Arlington. Drunken wiffle ball at sunset? Sign me up! Backyard bong hits before surfing? Hell yeah!

[Derek]

I will challenge anyone to round of beer pong, I am unstoppable. My skills are still talked of in hushed tones from house parties in Adams Morgan to Dewey Beach.

[Daze]

I'm way too old for beer pong anyway, but ...

No Wiffleball?!? WTF?

[David]

I wonder what the wiffle ball ticket listed as the charge?

Derek, you're on. But we call the game Beirut.

[gaius marius]

guess i better take by new wiffle-bat and bag of balls back to wal-mart.

[Kurt]

Don't live in a beach town if you don't like young drunk people running around. Also, if you hate the sight of hot chicks in bikinis then you definitely don't want to live in a beach town. If the smell of Budweiser and pot smoke carried aloft on a cool summer breeze offends you, then by all means, purchase your property well inland.

That cuts both ways. Don't live in Belmar if you like to play outdoor beer pong. If the sight of legislators passing restrictive laws bothers you, by all means move inland, or to another of the thousands of beach towns more accomodating to your lifestyle.

[db]

Jennifer:

I'd join you, but I refuse to set foot in New Jersey.

[native NYer]

They're outlawing quarters!?!

What's next, making bizz-buzz a felony?

[fluffy]

The best thing you could do is make a sign that says "Wiffleball for Famine Awareness" and then if the police in Belmar try to give you a hard time, explain that you're not playing a game, you're hosting a political function.

No one can tell you that you can't simultaneously drink and petition the government for redress of grievances.

[muchsarcasm]

Why don't they just put a "BENNYs Go Home" bumper sticker on their cars like half the locals at the shore?

[David]

The more I think of this, it's nothing more than rules of most sensitive or irritable neighbor are projected onto the property of all the others.

[Yogi]

David-

The game's called Beirut out here in the heartland too. http://www.thefacebook.com has a national college championship tourney. (yes, its gone commercial, soon you'll see it on ESPN8, The OCHO) On campuses that are dry, you have to use milk in order to qualify. I'm pretty sure that would be much harder than pounding Coors Light.

[David]

Milk? I get full after about a glass or two, drinking six would incapacitate me. More pressure to knock down those shots.

[Jason Ligon]

All other drinking games pale before the mighty "You Chug". It is the drinking game distilled to its essence.

[mike]

A Neighboring beach should have the biggest beer pong tornament in history, bring a bunch of spoonors and invite a throng of college students eager to get plastered. Then maybe the beach with their ridiculous nanny laws will change their ways.

[Beach bum]

Beach Haven on the Jersey shore had a lot of laws in the 80s and early 90s against ?those damn kids and their drinking? and went from public drunkenness to banning Frisbees, kites, and ball playing. I?m sure the locals were happy as clams until all their renters left for the other nearby towns without such stringent nanny laws. Most of the laws were repealed in the late 90s (except for the public drunkenness).

[db]

Any Penn Staters out there who frequented The Phyrst will know that the most demanding drinking game ever is "Table Wars," especially if you're the Bell Ringer.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Clearly the solution to this "problem" is to require the pingpong ball manufacturer's to coat their balls with some sort of substance that will produce mildly toxic chemicals when dissolved in beer and make these pests sick when they play this degenerate drinking game.

Something like the airplane glue makers supposedly did back in my day to keep 12 years olds from joining the long-chain molecule air force.